Musings on the Mainland: an insider perspective on society, culture, the queer experience & race relations in the United States (Y la poesía en mi cabeza!)

2013-04-21

Classism & Homelessness: The Last Great American Prejudice

I want to foreword this post by saying that
I do not believe racism, sexism or homophobia have been eradicated from our
society I just believe it is less societally acceptable to perpetuate those
prejudices than it is to be classist.

Recently I found myself questioning this
idea of the acceptability of classism. I was a at gathering where there were
few people I had met before. The conversation turned to homeless people, as
Portland has a very large homeless population due to the availability of many
social assistance programs and a vibrant street culture. A popular pastime of
Portlanders (it seems) is to share stories about homeless encounters and
generally bash the homeless population over drinks in a cosy atmosphere.

The partygoers exchanged various tales of
how awful homeless people were here and how terrible it was to walk to work and
run into someone begging for spare change. They waxed on how these people were
just taking advantage of society, how they were lazy, how they were undeserving
of human interaction. The equation
of negative interactions being much worse than what it is like being homeless
is disingenuous, selfish and disgusting. I admit I have become desensitized to
this bashing, but that evening the length of the sport became so protracted
that I made up an excuse to leave with another friend of mine who afterwards
shared his feelings of disgust about the attitudes of the other partygoers.

What fascinates me is people’s inability to
conceptualize homeless people as people. They reduce them to nonhuman entities
worthy only of revile and ignoring. I find this highly disturbing and
problematic, especially as it has become so easy to fall out of your class now.
There are many people who are becoming homeless who were middle class before.
Foreclosures, banks, mental healthcare, job scarcity and a rise in living costs
have all contributed to this. I think this is compounded by American society’s
“bootstrap” idealization of success. People are measured by how well they
survive on their own. We put very little validity on helping others and creating
community. I say “we” but I really mean White upper-middle class capitalist
Christian thinking (there are numerous communities in the United States such as
Native Americans and Jewish people which are the opposite).

I have known people in my life who have
become homeless temporarily or for long periods of time and I tried to help
them in whatever way I could. One of my friends related to an acquaintance of
mine that I was the only person he had known in his previous life before he had
to sleep under a bridge that actually still spoke to him and acted as if
nothing was different. I remember him still. I treated him with dignity and
respect as I would treat all people. My friend was a homeless person. Homeless
people are after all, people.

I encourage you to think about that next time you decide to
join in some bitching about how annoyed you were that someone asked you for
change. Keep your classism to yourself.